Today has been Grandma Al’s 13th birthday. She has celebrated at home with her granddaughters Kady and Dora and her good friend and face-washer Huxley.
Alice’s days are comprised of:
1) sleeping in her crate,
2) sleeping under our feet,
3) grazing in the yard,
and 4) waiting for her next meal (see picture of Alice in crate).
It is a very lucky 13th birthday as just a week ago I wasn’t sure that she would live to see it. The grazing-in-the-yard may be the end of her yet. I noticed on Friday the 31st that Alice seemed to have a sore mouth and she wouldn’t let me open it to check. That itself was alarming as she is usually quite good about letting herself be man-handled. I figured she probably had an abscessed tooth. Saturday morning when we woke up to let the dogs out for their morning ritual, Alice didn’t get off the bed and trundle after the youngsters. I looked at her and her right eye was swollen and the third lid wasn’t opening. I called the vet’s office the moment they opened at 8 a.m. and took her right in. Dropped her off and went to the day-job office to work until I could pick her up.
I turned out to be rather more complicated than an abscessed molar. While grazing, she had ingested grass that had gone to seed, i.e. a foxtail. The sharp point had dug into the back right side of her upper jaw about where our wisdom teeth would be. (Alice obviously has no wisdom teeth.) It had then worked its way up to behind her eye, creating a huge abscess. I don’t want to know how they cleaned it all up, but the vet tech said that it turned her stomach.
Al had to stay at the dog hospital for the weekend. After I brought her home she was still in a great deal of pain, so I went back to the vet and got Tramadol for her. Alice said that helped a lot. She lived in a little fog through the next weekend. This week she is thankfully much better and back to her old (yes, old and slow) self.
With a sigh of relief, here’s to many more birthdays to the old girl. Many of us owe her a lot.